Marcello Bonazza. Il fisco in una statualita divisa: Impero, principi e ceti in area trentino-tirolese nella prima eta moderna.

Bologna: Societa editrice il Mulino, 2001. 530 pp. index, bibl. 29.95 [euro]. ISBN: 88-1508386-3.

Marcello Bonazza tells a complicated story. The core of his book focuses on the bishopric of Trent, an independent state on the periphery of the Holy Roman

Empire, and traces the attempts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to integrate the region fiscally and administratively with the neighboring county of Tyrol. More broadly, however, the author uses Trent as what he calls a "precious picklock" (grimaldello prezioso, 76) to examine larger constitutional, institutional, social, political, and military issues pertaining both to the local region and to the empire as a whole. The most significant aspect of the book is the discussion of the nexus between military expenditure, taxation, and the evolution of the state--a subject that is currently much debated among Europeanists.

The study is a meticulous one. Bonazza deals with a period of over one hundred and fifty years, using a wide array of documentary sources drawn principally from archives in Trent, Innsbruck, and Vienna. The history of Trent in the medieval and early modern period has largely been ignored and the author must therefore do a significant amount of digging. He does well situating his archival findings into the broader context of the studies of taxation and state development of Hocquet, Bonney, Molho, Knapton, and Tilly; and the more specific German historiographical tradition of Oesteich, Brunner, Henshall, and Moraw and Press.

Bonazza's account begins in 1511, the year the Emperor Maximillian enacted the so-called Landlibel. The legislation brought Trent and Tyrol, two independent entities, under a common system of defense and taxation. The legislation required the region to produce up to 20,000 soldiers to meet the growing military needs of the empire. It contained detailed rules for the structure and outfitting of the army, which are themselves of interest for the greater military history of the period. But the act did not spell out the fiscal details for the union, and the participants agreed only to supply troops for defense of the region: Trent was specifically exempted from all other exactions. The restrictions would prove fateful.

Bonazza carefully and systematically examines the intricate fiscal and administrative structures of Trent, Tyrol, and the Holy Roman Empire. He looks at the historical development of each entity and deserves particular credit for his attention to social structures, a crucial part of the puzzle. Their proximity notwithstanding, Trent and Tyrol had little in common. Trent was institutionally well-defined, but politically and fiscally weak, with a tradition of strong local privilege and a local culture similar to that of Italian states of the Veneto. Tyrol was more sophisticated fiscally and structurally, had greater participation of social classes, and was culturally more congruent with German feudal states of the rest of the empire. As the empire sought its due, the region consistently fell short of its tax quota. Trent proved singularly recalcitrant.

The situation reached a crisis in 1573 when the empire, saddled with pressing debt, tinkered with the system. Among other things, it imposed regular taxes based on evaluation of wealth and granted more local control. The reform set the stage for a showdown with Trent, which refused to go beyond the terms of the Landlibel of 1511. The tensions ultimately culminated in a bitter three-sided Steuerstreit, or tax dispute in the seventeenth century. The dispute reached its climax during the Thirty Years' War, when the fiscal pressure on the empire was at its greatest.

The conflict had no happy ending, and Bonazza does not present one. The dispute subsided with the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. But the issues were never resolved. Bonazza explains the importance of the story of Trent, Tyrol, and the Steuerstreitas providing an "alternate model" to the concept of the emerging fiscal state in the seventeenth century. The region remained a "statehood divided." Bonazza's clear-sighted depiction of the complexity of the issue is the true value of the book.

WILLIAM CAFERRO

Vanderbilt University